LCD televisions which, may be very thin, are attractive among consumers. Accordingly, there is a desire to make televisions as thin as possible. Generally, an LCD television comprises a LC display, which is illuminated by a backlight. Accordingly, a thickness of an LCD television may be reduced by reducing the thickness of the backlight. However, reducing the thickness of the LCD backlight may negatively affect the capability of the backlight to illuminate the LC display with a uniform light intensity.
To improve the contrast of the displayed picture and to reduce the power consumption of the display backlights, individually controlled segments within a backlight are preferred. By dimming the brightness of a segment of the backlight, the black level of the dimmed part of the displayed picture can be improved, and the power consumption will reduce. Backlights capable of controlling segments individually are generally thicker than backlights without this capability
To limit the increase of the thickness, such backlights generally use a high number of small LED's, resulting in high cost. To reduce the thickness further, light guide concepts may be applied which use expensive materials and which are hard to produce.
Accordingly, there is a need for improving such backlights for LCD televisions and for other pixel based displays.